AwakenLife Yoga & Counselling

AwakenLife Yoga & Counselling For every mother whose body remembers. For those walking beside families with care.

Pregnancy • Birth • Postpartum • Motherhood
Held Within Capacity™ & Held Within Pregnancy™
By Juliana — Mama to Kai & Luca

I work with the body. I teach yoga and somatic practices. I value deeply what nervous system understanding has brought i...
30/08/2026

I work with the body. I teach yoga and somatic practices. I value deeply what nervous system understanding has brought into conversations about trauma, mental health and motherhood.

And I’m increasingly uncomfortable with some of the language around regulation.

Because context matters.

A mother does not exist separately from the conditions of her life.

Sometimes her anxiety, anger, activation, exhaustion or overwhelm is not something we need to immediately bring down.

Sometimes it makes sense.

Sometimes her body needs movement before stillness. Expression before breath.
Someone beside her before another regulation practice.

And sometimes what needs to change is not within her at all.

She needs sleep.
Safety.
Security.
Money.
Food.
Care.
Medical support.
Someone to take the baby.
Someone to believe her.
Someone to share the unbearable load.

I’m inviting us to be careful with the language of regulation... So it doesn’t become another socially acceptable way of asking women to contain themselves…
Be calm.
Don’t react.
Hold it together.
Manage yourself better.

I believe we can hold accountability for how we care for ourselves, AND we still need to look at the full context of life.

Nervous system tools can be deeply supportive.
But they are not a measure of how well we are mothering.

And maternal mental health asks us to look beyond the individual mother and towards the relationships, resources, systems and conditions she is living within.

Before we ask a mother to regulate herself, perhaps we need to understand what her body is responding to.

As Esther Perel says (and I keep coming back to this): “The quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life”.

“Today, I leave the rush outside.The world can wait.It’s in the smile of those I lovethat life learns how to breathe.A c...
28/08/2026

“Today, I leave the rush outside.
The world can wait.

It’s in the smile of those I love
that life learns how to breathe.

A coffee, a hammock, the wind singing,
in the sway of the afternoon,
time wants to stand still.

Because living is also resting.
It’s sharing stories,
it’s finding comfort in one another.

Among family, love, and song,
I find peace within my heart.“

I’m not a religious person.

But I’ve learned along the way that sometimes, music feels like a prayer.

On the days life feels harsh, when my heart feels heavy, I lean into music.
Into sound.
Into song.

I let it move through my body.
I let myself sing, even when the words don’t quite belong to me.
And somehow, I let this prayer fill my body with a little more hope, a little more joy.

A reminder that even when life aches, there is still music.
There is still love.
There is still life moving through us.

Don't know if you needed to read this today… I really did. 🤍

27/08/2026

An invitation to explore sensation.

To move without needing to get anything right.
To notice the edges of your body, the shapes it wants to make, the places asking for movement… or rest.

Circular motions.
Intuitive movement.
Following rather than directing.

An invitation to soften the need to perform a practice, and rest a little more in your ability to listen.

To let the body guide.

To move in ways that feel feminine, fluid, alive.

What happens when, for a moment, you stop asking ‘Am I doing this right?’ and begin asking…
‘What feels good here?’
‘Where does my body want to go?’

There is so much that can be awakened through pregnancy, birth, and our encounter with motherhood.Parts of ourselves we ...
26/08/2026

There is so much that can be awakened through pregnancy, birth, and our encounter with motherhood.

Parts of ourselves we know well.
Parts we are meeting for the first time.
Our histories, relationships, hopes, fears, grief, joy, vulnerabilities… all moving alongside the life that is unfolding.

This is much of what sits at the heart of my work.

Creating spaces where we can tend to our mental health while also remaining curious about the wider landscape of our lives...psychological, emotional, relational and embodied.

I’ve gathered two resources as places you can begin:

While We Are One — a free resource for pregnancy, with reflections on the emotional landscape of pregnancy, navigating care, grounding practices and mental health support.

The Sky Between Us — An Introduction — for mothers on the other side of birth, exploring birth, trauma, shadows, the stories our bodies hold and landing in motherhood, alongside grounding and an online trauma-informed practice.

And if you’re longing for somewhere to bring your own experience, I also offer 1:1 counselling and mentoring.

Come as you are, with whatever this season is holding.

Resources + free connection calls through the link in bio. 🤍

Motherhood has changed the way I understand relationships.I used to think that the people closest to us would naturally ...
24/08/2026

Motherhood has changed the way I understand relationships.

I used to think that the people closest to us would naturally be the ones who could meet us in most places.

And then life happened.
Motherhood happened.
Grief happened.
I changed.

And I began to understand that we need different people for different parts of our humanity.

Someone to sit beside the grief.
Someone to make us laugh until our belly hurts.
Someone who understands motherhood without needing much explanation.
Someone who asks the harder question.
Someone who brings food.
Someone who plays with our children while we drink a coffee while it’s still hot.
Someone who remembers who we were before we became mothers.
Someone who is interested in who we are becoming now.

And perhaps there is freedom in allowing our relationships to be what they are, rather than asking one person to become an entire village.

My husband and I have spoken about this a lot.

There have been seasons where we have expected too much from one another...especially through motherhood, grief, raising two little humans and building a life far away from much of our family.

We love each other deeply.
And still, we cannot be everything for each other.

I actually think recognising this has made our relationship stronger.

Because belonging is bigger than partnership.

We need friendship.
Community.
Different generations.
People who challenge us.
People who witness us.
People who help practically.
People we can be completely silly with.
People with whom we can arrive without performing.

And these relationships need tending too.

They ask for reciprocity.
Honesty.
Repair.
Showing up.
Allowing ourselves to receive.
And learning how to contribute to another person’s life, not only asking who will contribute to ours.

Maybe the village isn’t something we simply find.
Maybe, little by little, relationship by relationship, we participate in building it.

And perhaps one of the most beautiful parts is realising...no one person has to be everything. 🤎

And in the middle of so much noise…and my decision to join the conversation around maternal mental health these past day...
23/08/2026

And in the middle of so much noise…and my decision to join the conversation around maternal mental health these past days…

I look at the sky….

That pause I keep talking about.

And once again, I’m reminded of the possibility of holding more than one thing at once.

The ache.
The complexity of our humanity.
And, alongside it all, the joy of being alive.
🤍

22/08/2026

And… postpartum psychosis is a medical emergency.

And as I close these reflections, I keep coming back to this:

How can we collectively support and care for mothers experiencing deep distress?

Can we open a little more space within ourselves to meet what we may not fully understand?

To pause before assumption.

To remember that our perception is only one way of seeing.

To bring compassion, curiosity and empathy into conversations that hold so much complexity.

This is not about looking away from harm, or from the people deeply impacted by it.

It is about asking whether we can hold more than one thing at the same time.

The woman and the people around her.
Her inner world and the context of her life.
Diagnosis and the human experience underneath and around it.
Individual responsibility and the systems of care that surround us.

And perhaps also asking: What happens before crisis?

Who is there?
Who notices?
Who listens?
Who knows this woman well enough to recognise when something is shifting?
Who does she have when she says, I am not okay?

Because we do not exist outside relationship.
And neither does our distress.

There is so much nuance here. So much I haven’t touched on. But I hope these three parts can be an opening for us to keep having these conversations with more care, curiosity and humanity. 🤍

21/08/2026

In this second part I share a little of my path through pregnancies, births, and my changing inner landscape along the way…

Especially the shift in perspective during my second pregnancy, when so much of my preparation was not actually for birth, but for my postpartum.

Looking at the context of my life.
My history.
My relationships, and the quality of them.
My mental health.
My capacity.
What I knew about myself by then.
What I knew I might need.

Because all of this can guide us into preparation too… and into understanding the kind of support we might need. And that changes. We change. Our lives change.

Knowing my risks mattered.
Knowing I was not well, that my capacity was low, that I was in a very down mental health state… mattered.
And having someone there who could actually say, “I see you. And I know you, you need support.”

There was something in being seen that opened the possibility for things to soften and shift.

It’s so much relational…
In the co-regulation.
In having people who care enough to actually have hard conversations.
People who are genuine in their care. Who want to know you, witness you, be there with you.
And care that is ethical, mother-centred and trauma-informed.

I’m not saying this prevents distress from happening.
I’m not saying preparation and support eliminate the possibility of postpartum psychosis or other maternal mental health conditions. They don’t….

But I do believe they can offer containment and safety. They can support the mother and the family. And they can offer possibility of recovery…

They can help us notice when something is changing.
They can make it more possible to ask for help, or for someone else to recognise that help is needed.
The woman and the family is not left alone...

And perhaps this is also part of preparing for postpartum…

Looking honestly at the life we are already living, the relationships around us, our history, our capacity, our risks…

and asking…
What might I need to be held through what is coming?

20/08/2026

I’m seeing so much being shared about Lindsay Clancy case . About postpartum psychosis. About maternal mental health.

This is a conversation I enter not only through what I have studied, but through what I have lived and witnessed...and what I continue to tend to and make meaning of, as a daughter and as a mother.

Maternal mental health is the work I hold because it is deeply personal. It is also one of the ways I have chosen to meet differently a family lineage shaped by severe mental health distress.

Here is a little of my history, held in reflection...and some of the questions it continues to raise for me about motherhood, mental health, the people who hold us, and how we collectively respond when someone is in crisis.

Part 1 of 3.

Are you pregnancy and feeling so much coming to the surface? Have you been preparing for birth, but wondering how you pr...
18/08/2026

Are you pregnancy and feeling so much coming to the surface?

Have you been preparing for birth, but wondering how you prepare yourself for what is coming?

Are you making sense of your birth, the imprint that your body holds?

Has postpartum brought feelings you didn’t expect to get so loud? Alongside joy and love…grief, anxiety, anger, rage, loneliness, deep sadness, overwhelm?

Has motherhood changed the way you see yourself, your body, your relationships, or where you belong?

Or perhaps you can’t quite name what is happening yet… you just know that something in you is asking for attention.

Sometimes what we need is somewhere to bring the complexity. The nuance of our messy humanity.

To be curious about what is here.
To notice what has changed.
To meet ourselves within it.

This is at the heart of how I work, and of Held Within Capacity.
A framework shaped through my studies in psychology and yoga, my work, and my own encounters with pregnancy, birth and motherhood.

Perinatal and maternal mental health is not only about nervous system regulation. And I don’t believe our work should become another place where women are asked to fix themselves.

Your body matters. And so do your history, relationships, identity, support and the conditions of your life.

At the centre is you.

I’m currently opening space for 1:1 counselling and mentoring — through preconception, pregnancy, birth preparation, postpartum, perinatal and maternal mental health, and the many seasons of becoming and being a mother.

And if you’d rather begin in your own time, The Sky Between Us — An Introduction for Mothers is another place to start.

If something here meets you, you’re welcome to message me. 🤍

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Sydney, NSW

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